Sources say Van Hollen's office declined to help with John Doe

DA's office made request in county aide probe

State Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen was asked months ago to assist in a growing secret investigation of former and current aides to Gov. Scott Walker, but Van Hollen's office declined, sources familiar with the request said Tuesday.

Van Hollen's agency assisted with at least one previous John Doe investigation run by the Milwaukee County district attorney's office, lending a hand during the probe of former Milwaukee Ald. Michael McGee. State Department of Justice officials would not say why the agency chose not to assist with the investigation of Walker's former county staffers.

Sources said the request was made around the time of the November 2010 election.

Also on Tuesday, state attorneys filed a motion to withdraw an affidavit by Walker aide Cindy Archer in a federal challenge to Walker's collective bargaining law - less than one week after FBI agents and other law enforcement officers raided her Madison home.

State officials wouldn't say if the motion was filed as a result of the raid.

"We're not commenting beyond what's in the motion," said Dana Brueck, spokeswoman for the state Department of Justice.

Archer served as Walker's deputy administration secretary but recently transferred to the state Department of Children and Families and is currently on medical leave. She served as a top aide to Walker when he was county executive.

Before the raid on Archer's home, authorities seized the work computers of two other former Walker staffers and executed a search warrant of one of their homes.

The John Doe is being run by the office of Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, a Democrat. Van Hollen and Walker are Republicans.

Van Hollen and Chisholm have collaborated on some matters, and around the time Chisholm's office made its request for help with the John Doe investigation the two agencies were working together as part of an election fraud task force.

Brueck declined to comment on the investigation, as did Milwaukee County Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf, who is overseeing the John Doe probe.

Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie also declined to comment. Walker said last week he didn't know anything about the investigation beyond what he has read in press accounts, even though his campaign was subpoenaed for emails just before he won the November election for governor.

His campaign has retained former U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic, and in the first half of the year paid Biskupic's firm nearly $60,000.

John Doe investigations are secret proceedings in which witnesses can be subpoenaed and compelled to testify under oath about potential criminal matters and are forbidden from talking publicly about the case. Sources said prosecutors have been looking into whether county staffers were doing political work while on the clock and failing to do county jobs.

Bargaining law

In the collective bargaining case, a group of labor unions filed suit in U.S. District Court in mid-June hoping to block Walker's legislation, which severely curtailed the negotiating ability of most public unions. The unions contend, among other things, that the law is unconstitutional because it effectively creates two classes of public-sector workers.

Before the governor submitted the bill, Archer said, her agency conducted a study to determine which state and local employees would be needed for the state to continue to provide essential services if workers decided to go on strike.

"DOA also advised the governor that State Patrol and local law enforcement would be required to provide necessary staff and state building security," Archer wrote on June 27.

Union lawyers later told the court that they wanted to investigate Archer's claims, including possibly deposing witnesses.

On Tuesday, Eric McLeod, a private attorney hired by the state to argue the case, filed a motion asking the court to allow the state to simply withdraw Archer's statement. That should make depositions and discovery by the union lawyers unnecessary, McLeod wrote.

Attorneys for the public employee unions could not be reached for comment. It is not known whether they will challenge the request to withdraw Archer's affidavit.

John Doe probe

In Milwaukee County, prosecutors launched their investigation at about the same time Darlene Wink left her county job as Walker's constituent services coordinator in May 2010. She quit shortly after admitting that she had frequently posted online comments on Journal Sentinel stories and blogs while on the county clock; nearly all of her posts praised Walker or criticized his opponents.

Authorities later took her work computer and executed a search warrant of her home. They also took the work computer of Tim Russell, a former Walker campaign staffer who was then working as county housing director.

Sources have said the investigation has increasingly focused on the activities of Archer and Tom Nardelli, Walker's former county chief of staff.

Archer and Nardelli were Walker's top two lieutenants for the past three years of his eight-year tenure as county executive, including the busy months leading up to the election. Both eventually followed Walker to Madison after he won the race for governor.

Nardelli quit his state job as administrator for the Division of Environmental and Regulatory Services in July. That was three days after he had accepted the job, a transfer from another state administrative position.

The exact timing of Milwaukee County's request for help was unclear, but it happened in the weeks before or after the November 2010 election. Once Walker won, he began assembling his team to run state government, and the attorney general's office started providing some of those officials legal assistance.

Sources have indicated that Chisholm's office continues to take the lead in the case of Walker's former county staffers, with federal authorities providing assistance with computers and other digital technology.

Frank Tuerkheimer, a University of Wisconsin-Madison emeritus law professor and former U.S. attorney, said it would not be unusual for the Department of Justice to decline to help a district attorney with an investigation and for the district attorney to then turn to the FBI for help.

During Wednesday's raid, FBI agents retrieved a box from Archer's house and took a computer hard drive that Archer had recently sold to her next-door neighbor at a garage sale. Archer has said she got rid of the computer because she had not used it for years.

Archer, 52, abruptly quit her job on Aug. 19 as the No. 2 official at the powerful Department of Administration. She made $124,000 in that position.

She was to start the following Monday as legislative liaison at the Department of Children and Families, but began taking paid medical leave that day.

She is making $99,449 in that job - $39,129 more than her predecessor. That 65% pay hike was possible because Walker's fellow Republicans turned 39 civil service jobs into political positions earlier this year.

Public records show Landgraf's office has brought charges against at least three individuals as a result of a John Doe investigation.

Landgraf, who oversees campaign and election issues, said both the FBI and state Department of Justice assisted with the prosecution of McGee, a Democrat. He was convicted by a federal jury in June 2008 of nine counts of bribery, extortion, attempted extortion and trying to hide a $30,000 transaction. He was sentenced to 6½ years behind bars. In state court, McGee pleaded no contest to a felony charge of lying to an elections official and a misdemeanor of violating court orders. As a result, he will serve an additional year in prison after he completes his federal sentence.

Landgraf said a forensic accountant with the local U.S. attorney's office assisted with the investigation of former Milwaukee County Supervisor Toni Clark. The prosecutor said he doesn't recall any involvement by the FBI or state justice officials.

Last year, Clark was sentenced to six months in jail, with work-release privileges, and three years' probation for a felony conviction of filing a false campaign report. She transferred some $6,500 in campaign donations to her personal bank accounts over seven years.

The current John Doe investigation already has resulted in the conviction of railroad executive William Gardner. An investigator with the state Government Accountability Board lent Landgraf's agency a helping hand in that part of the investigation. The criminal complaint doesn't mention any involvement by the state DOJ or FBI.

Gardner, president and chief executive officer of Wisconsin & Southern Railroad Co. and a major donor to Walker, was sentenced to two years' probation in July after pleading guilty to two felonies for exceeding campaign contribution limits to Walker's campaign and laundering additional campaign contributions through employees and associates.

John Diedrich of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.

About Patrick Marley

Patrick Marley covers state government and state politics. He is the author, with Journal Sentinel reporter Jason Stein, of "More Than They Bargained For: Scott Walker, Unions and the Fight for Wisconsin.”